


lycanthropy

by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf)



Series: space opera au [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Community: HPFT, Gen, lycanthropy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 01:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17992118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegandalf/pseuds/facingthenorthwind
Summary: Remus Lupin has been trying to hide his... affliction for the last year and a half. He should have realised he was doing a poor job of it, but it's not like he expected his friends to befinewith it.For HPFT's Great Collab, theme 'back from the brink' and challenge 'internalised oppression'.





	lycanthropy

**Author's Note:**

> Werewolves! In! Spaaaaaaace!
> 
> My version of lycanthropy here is loosely based off toxoplasmosis, but it's also nonsense because this is a space opera.

Remus Lupin really, really, really wants to disappear. It’s not a talent he has, as a Welber — he can’t think of any benefits of being a Welber, if he’s honest. But as he stands here, in their dormitory, surrounded by the boys he had thought were his friends but were definitely not going to be in about five minutes, he wishes there were some Welberian talent that would stop his world from ending.

His hand still aches from where he broke it last night. Madam Pomfrey had fixed it up, of course, but the machines used to reknit bones and heal wounds always leave something behind — an ache, an itch, something you can’t quite touch but you also can’t ignore.

They’ve cornered him fresh from the infirmary — he found them sitting on his bed, all together and waiting for him like they’d planned this. Well, from the way they’re looking at each other, they _have_ planned this. Remus wonders if vomiting on them will make this conversation not happen.

“Remus,” James begins when neither Peter nor Sirius seem willing to, “you’re our friend, you know that, right?”

Remus cannot speak. He feels like he can’t even breathe. He nods jerkily.

“Look, we know — we don’t want to be racist or anything, alright, but uh, we’re just… we’re wondering…” James seems to flounder a little, and instead, Sirius speaks up, showing none of James’s hesitation.

“We think you’ve got lycanthropy.”

The room is silent for a moment as Remus considers his options. They are as follows:

  1. Vomit on all three of them, flee, sleep in the common room for the next five and a half years.
  2. Flee, vomit in the bathroom, sleep in the common room for the next five and a half years.
  3. Admit the truth, possibly vomit on himself, get expelled and return home in shame and never get access to an education ever again.
  4. Figure out a really, really good lie.



Ideally, the fourth option would be the one he’d choose, but he is plumb out of really good lies. Coming up with a new one every month is difficult — you can only have so many relatives die, only so many twenty-four hour stomach bugs, and the way he always came back with injuries was difficult to explain at the best of times. He has never really had any good lies.

Remus is supposed to say something at this juncture of the conversation, he’s pretty sure. He does not.

The terror he’s feeling must show on his face, because James reaches out slowly, as if he’s some kind of wild beast prone to spooking, and says, “This doesn’t change anything, I promise. We’re still your mates. You’ve had it the whole time, haven’t you? And you’ve never once tried to hurt any of us.”

“We did some research,” Sirius says, pulling out his datapad. “About what it actually is. None of us really knew, obviously, because we’d always heard that all Welbers had it, and then that it was racist to assume all Welbers had it, and then that non-Welbers could get it but only as carriers, but not heaps about what it actually _is_? And we know now, but we’re not sure what to do to actually help you, because none of the suggestions we found on the holonet are any good. It’s all about locking you up and stuff.”

“They’ve got that one covered,” Remus says at last, smiling bitterly. “That’s what you have to do. I’m a danger otherwise.”

Peter frowns at him, but it’s James that shakes his head, looking angry. “No! No, see, we were thinking about that, and hear us out, alright? So all the articles and whatnot say that you get… violent, and you take risks, and you can’t remember anything for that twelve-hour period once a month, right?”

Remus nods. He doesn’t trust himself to speak again. Hearing this all said by his own classmates, the boys he shares a dormitory with, is basically his worst nightmare — it is definitely a nightmare he’s had before. He cannot work out how to wake up.

“And some horrid scientist did some experiment and wrote that—” and here James puts on a voice and pulls a face to demonstrate what he thinks of this, “‘Welbers appear to self-harm in the absence of another creature to injure, proving that confinement is a necessary component of treating lycanthropy’ or some hogwash like that.”

Remus flexes the fingers of his right hand. “They’re right.” His hand aches and tingles a little.

“Okay, but what if you had people to fight? Then you wouldn’t hurt yourself!” James grins triumphantly, as if he’s said something worth celebrating.

“What?”

“We’d go in with you, and then we can fight you, and then you don’t hurt yourself!”

The best thing Remus can say about this announcement is that the primary emotion he feels is no longer terror or the visceral desire to be literally anywhere else. It takes him by surprise how angry he is about this, how all three of them are smiling now, as if three Second Years have solved a problem his people have been living with for hundreds of years.

“There are easier ways to get me expelled,” he says at last, after floundering for long moments for something coherent to say that isn’t just punching James in the face and never speaking to any of them again. “You should probably try those first.”

Their faces fall, as if they expected him to be pleased about this, and they don’t understand why he isn’t.

“We don’t want you to get expelled, we want to help you. You’re our mate.” It’s Peter that says it, this time, in a small voice.

“That’s what would happen. I’d kill you or at least hurt you and then your parents would have me expelled and then I’d — I’d get locked up and I’d never be free again.” A small voice reminds him that there are other, even worse punishments, but he’d be on his home planet, and they’d never know about it if it happened. When it happened.

Welbers with lycanthropy don’t deserve to live. They don’t even deserve friends, like the ones who are standing before him now. Remus can’t believe he’s the only one in the room that recognises that.

James is visibly horrified, bringing up a hand to rub anxiously at the nub of his antlers that haven’t grown in for the season yet. Peter’s ears droop. Only Sirius looks not entirely defeated — instead he’s thinking hard, and Remus can almost hear the gears turning in his head.

“We followed you last night, to see where they kept you,” he begins, holding up a hand to stop Remus from interrupting him. “I assume the door can’t be opened from the inside, right?”

Remus nods. It would be a pretty useless exercise if he could just leave the room and go hurt someone.

“There’s no lock on the outside, though — no one ever goes down there, so there doesn’t need to be. So all we need to do is sneak in after Pomfrey’s dropped you off, get inside, and then have someone — Pete, probably, because he can’t fight you, you’d squash him — open it back up before Pomfrey comes back and then we slip out again.”

“That doesn’t solve the problem of me killing you! I’m not myself, I don’t — I won’t remember who you are. I can’t be reasoned with. I’m dangerous.” He’d learnt that the hard way, sure that he wouldn’t hurt his own father. The scar was an ugly reminder every time Remus saw his dad’s arm.

“I reckon I can take you,” Sirius says, puffing himself up. “And once James’s antlers grow in he can pin you, if you like, so you can’t hurt anyone, not even yourself.”

“But what if you’re wrong?”

“If I’m wrong, then James or Pete will open the door and come rescue me. We won’t dob you in, we swear — we’ll say it was an accident, that I fell or James had a nightmare and stabbed me with his antlers or something.”

Looking at the earnest faces of his three best friends — his only friends in the whole galaxy — Remus dares to let himself hope, just a little. Could things be better than they are now?

“Not until James has finished velvet,” he says hesitantly. “Then he can use his antlers to help.”

Sirius lets out a, “Whoop!” and James hugs him. Peter grins.

And for perhaps the first time in Remus’s life, he lets himself grin back.


End file.
